“House for sale with everything inside”

The deep economic crisis, made worse by the pandemic and the tightening of US sanctions, was the main trigger for citizen protests a month ago in Cuba, where many choose to sell their homes with “everything inside” and seek a emergency exit to another country.

Real estate ads on social networks have multiplied in recent months with one thing in common: they are left furnished, equipped and, if possible, they are paid in cash dollars.

Young people like Yadira have chosen to sell their houses to go to the United States “as soon as the airport opens”. She says that with the money from the sale of her small apartment located in the municipality of Cerro in Havana, she will materialize a decision that has been postponed for years: to leave Cuba.

“Public transport is bad, buying food is an odyssey, even less I think about giving birth or getting married because as they say, ‘he who gets married wants to get married'”, says, for her part, Ana María. , 36 years. , who postponed her plan to start a family in the country where she was born.

At her side, her husband valued the possibility of going “through the jungle” through the countries of Central America at the mercy of “coyotes”, as the traffickers of illegal immigrants are called.

Others choose the most direct and risky route: the sea.

The official Granma newspaper published in June in two parts the article “The sea does not forgive”, which recounts the traumatic experience of 23 Cubans who, on March 2, 2021, left the country illegally through the province of Villa Clara. The adventure ended in a shipwreck in the Bahamas and five missing, including two children.

These Cubans paid $ 10,000 in cash to embark on rustic boats bound for the Florida coast.

On the other side of the pond, the American authorities have also alerted by various means of the increase in the number of Cubans who continue to throw themselves into the sea.

Since October 1, 2020, the US Coast Guard have intercepted 536 Cubans at sea compared to 49 for the whole of fiscal year 2020.

In turn, the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection confirmed that 35,738 Cubans attempted to cross that country’s land borders in the first five months of this year, compared with less than 20,000 who did. done within the previous 12 months.

So far in 2021, more than 500 people have been returned to Cuba, according to data from Havana’s Interior Ministry.

Visa

The Cuban government attributes this increase to the fact that the United States has not issued 20,000 visas per year, to the validity of the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 – which allows Cubans to apply for permanent residence in the United States for one year. and a day’s stay in this country. -, and the strengthening of the financial and commercial embargo.

The suspension of the processing and granting of immigrant and non-immigrant visas at the American consulate in Havana and the transfer of these procedures to third countries have also encouraged illegal departures, he also denounced.

The United States minimized the activity and staff of its embassy in Havana and diverted consular services to third countries after in 2017 nearly thirty of its diplomats suffered mysterious “incidents health “whose reasons have not yet been clarified.

Although the methods and countries of destination have changed, many Cubans persist in realizing their intention to leave their country of origin, even if they have to “sell the house with everything inside” to do so.

MASS CRISIS AND EXODES

The United States has historically been the main recipient of Cubans for years, bolstered by its geographic proximity and preferential treatment, for political reasons, to those who have arrived illegally from the island.

“Since 1959, the act of emigration has taken on the meaning of abandonment of the homeland and, consequently, assumes degrees of stigmatization commensurate with the start of the revolutionary triumph, which have been maintained until now”, explains Antonio Ajá, Cuban researcher. at the Center for International Migration Studies at the University of Havana.

Declared a public enemy of the revolutionary process, the United States encouraged the departure of the islanders through the Cuban Refugee Program in the early 1960s and the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, currently in force, adds the expert in his article “Cuban Emigration . Balance in the 20th century ”.

Each scenario of economic crisis in Cuba has resulted in the mass departure of people. This was the case in 1965 when the then president, Fidel Castro, announced that anyone with a relative abroad could leave and develop the port of Camarioca (Matanzas) for this.

In 1980, more than 125,000 Cubans left the island in just seven months for political and economic reasons via the port of Mariel – 55 kilometers from Havana – in what transcended the largest mass exodus to date .

Fourteen years later, the herringbone crisis took place, when the difficult economic situation of the “special period” of the 1990s and the protests against the government had the same response: to open up for all who wanted to leave.

As a result, more than 30,000 people crossed the dangerous Strait of Florida in precarious boats, a scramble that forced the two countries to agree on official channels to normalize the migratory flow, Ajá explains.

OBAMA CLOSED THE DOOR

Former President Barack Obama (2009-2017) closed the Cuban front door without legal authorization in the United States on January 12, 2017 by canceling by decree the so-called “dry feet, wet feet” policy.

It allowed Cubans who touched land (dry feet) to obtain permanent residence one year after their arrival, even if they did so illegally, while those intercepted at sea (wet feet) were sent back to the island.

Obama rescinded the policy – adopted by former President Bill Clinton (1993-2001) in 1995 – days before leaving the White House as part of the process of normalizing bilateral relations with Cuba, which included re-establishing ties in 2014 .

Since Obama repealed this policy, the Coast Guard has only intercepted around 100 Cubans who attempted to arrive by sea, a very small number compared to nearly 10,000 in 2016. (EFE)